Voda, O2 UK tune up mobile music offerings

The world’s biggest mobile operator by revenues, Vodafone, unleashed its second mobile music platform in the UK Thursday.

Vodafone Music, which was developed in partnership with RealNetworks, aims to complement Music Station, which was launched with Omnifone late in 2007.

The most noticeable difference between the two is that Vodafone Music has a more fluid and user friendly interface – it might actually be described as iTunes-ish.

The interface allows users to browse and buy music, as well as listen to a 30 second taster beforehand. Singles weight in at £0.99, while albums cost £7.99 with no hidden data charges.

Telecoms.com had a little chat with the Flying V on Thursday and confirmed that the main difference between the new offering and MusicStation is that users of Vodafone Music get to keep the tracks. Voda got some grief last year when MusicStation launched and it emerged that once users stopped subscribing to the service they lost access to their tunes.

Voda said that both services will co-exist.

In related news, O2 UK also announced a mobile music shop – what it claims is the “first operator-supported major label mobile music store”.

My Play, which is powered by Momac’s multimedia publishing platform GoMedia, offers videos, full track audio and real tones in one place. Each artist effectively has their own microsite and O2 is partnering with Sony BMG to help the venture fly.

According to O2, videos are priced at £1.50, tones at £3.50 and full music tracks at £0.99.